Hi everyone–
If you’re here for the Big Backlist Weekend, Click HERE! Please welcome my good friend, Z.A. Maxfield to the blog. ZAM is a pal and an inspiration for me because she’s such a brilliant writer. She’s one of the reasons i became an author. Also fantastic is the fact that this book, MY COWBOY HEART, is the first gay romance every contracted by Berkeley. So cool! There are wonderful prizes to WIN on ZAM’s Rafflecopter below. Here’s the ZAMtabulous ZAM —
A Day In The Life Of An Author
I saw a meme the other day on Facebook, about the lives authors lead. It went something like this:
What I want my readers to think I do…
I wake up in the sprawling master bedroom of my island fortress. A balmy tropical breeze blows the diaphanous sheers into the room. They remind me of the past. Of negligees and old lovers who have perished in duels over my honor. I take a minute to dab my face and neck with the lavender water my houseboy, Franz Carl, has left for me. In a moment he’ll be back with coffee and croissants.
Later, after a dip in the ocean and a scheduled tryst with my husband, my secretary Gervaise will stand just behind me and to the right where I cannot see him as he takes dictation. I gaze into an ornate Louis XIV mirror and tell myself the next chapter of my latest bestselling novel. He’ll send that transcript directly to the publisher, where my editors will simply retype it into ebook format and anxiously await the next installment.
Evening finds me in the massive industrial kitchen of my home, where I effortlessly cook family meals. My children and all their friends come over to dine every night. Everyone says I should open a restaurant, but I only demur. That is, after all, not where my true gift lies.
I spend the hours before bed gazing from the balcony on the highest part of the house out onto the churning sea…
What I want my editors think I do…
I wake up at around 4:00 a.m., perform my ablutions and return to bed. At five a.m. I drag my computer into my lap and start work. I give myself five minutes for emails, and five to tell my husband what part of the housework I won’t be doing today. Then I write.
At noon I make my way downstairs for a cup of coffee and toast. I then return to my room to write.
When my children knock, I pretend I’m not there. I once heard my son tell a telemarketer I couldn’t come to the phone because the chains don’t stretch that far…
My husband arrives home at 6:30. I have no idea what he finds when he walks through the door. I wonder briefly if it isn’t better that way.
He pushes some kind of fast food through the bedroom door at around 7:00. At 9:00, he texts me to say how his day went. I answer briefly with my word count.
At eleven, words swim on the screen. I roll over and place my laptop on the nightstand, plugged in, ready for the following day.
I perform my ablutions and go back to bed.
What I actually do…
I wake up, drag my computer into my lap, and answer about an hours worth of emails. Sometimes two hours… By this time, something has gone wrong with the house. The pool is suddenly and inexplicably filled with algae, the toilets don’t flush, carrot shavings are coming up in the shower, or bees are coming down the chimney.
My children are all home for the summer and someone is burning breakfast. Since they all cook for themselves, this will be repeated four times. I go downstairs for coffee and there is none. The bread that’s left is a moldy heel. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d think locust had passed through my kitchen. Milk, juice, cereal, frozen meals, lunchmeats, cheese, crackers, even condiments — all gone…
The kale remains the sole survivor in the refrigerator.
I briefly consider changing to sci-fi/horror when this gives me an idea for a story, but then I change my mind.
I stare at the screen. Type the lyrics to “Stairway to Heaven.” Stare some more. Watch the first season of Jonathan Creek. Stare some more. By this time my teens are getting loud. They whine about food. I point out they’re ambulatory. They have cash and friends who drive. Food is available at the market.
Someone knocks on my door at three and tells me they were supposed to be at the orthodontist at two. Similarly, the electricity goes off because I’ve misplaced the bill and forgotten to pay it.
After those two things get straightened out, someone knocks at the front door. He offers to sell me meat off a truck at bargain prices.
I briefly think about becoming a sci-fi/horror writer again. Reject it.
I’ve typed about a hundred useable words an hour. My husband comes home and –here’s where fantasy meets reality – offers to drive through Taco Bell for dinner. My house is now littered with teens who love that idea.
I’ve managed to scrape together a couple thousand usable words when the siren’s song of sleep beckons. I brush my teeth…change my — well, never mind that, I never got out of my pajamas in the first place…
I go to sleep.
Like Scarlet O’hara says, “Tomorrow is another day.”
A cowboy’s heart has room for anything…
J-Bar ranch foreman Malloy pretty much keeps to himself—slinking around the edges of everybody else like an old coyote, doing his job and staying private. That is until Crispin Carrasco shows up.
Lean, muscular, and with a motor mouth that won’t quit, Crispin sparks something in Malloy—something the foreman didn’t know was there. But how does a lone coyote approach the warmth of a fire? And more important, what would happen if that fire burned?
MY COWBOY HEART is Available at AMAZON B&N Goodreads
Author’s Bio:
Z. A. Maxfield started writing in 2007 on a dare from her children and never looked back. Pathologically disorganized, and perennially optimistic, she writes as much as she can, reads as much as she dares, and enjoys her time with family and friends. If anyone asks her how a wife and mother of four manages to find time for a writing career, she’ll answer, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you give up housework.”
Her published books include Crossing Borders, Drawn Together, and the St. Nacho’s and Brothers Grime series from Loose Id, ePistols at Dawn and The Pharaoh’s Concubine from Samhain Publishing, and Notturno, Vigil, Stirring Up Trouble, and All Stirred Up from MLR Press.
Author Links:
Website/Blog: http://zamaxfield.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZAMaxfield
FB Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/ZAMaxfield/165809416786338
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2738500.Z_A_Maxfield
Giveaway:
Grand Prize: 1 winner will receive a $50 Gift Card to either Amazon or B&N (winner’s choice) and an e-copy of “My Cowboy Heart”.
Additional Prize: 3 additional winners will be selected to receive e-book copies of “My Cowboy Heart”
Thank you so much for coming by! Be sure to enter on the Rafflecopter. And make sure you also entered the Big Backlist Weekend!
